Memory, Joanie, can be a bit of a Bitch sometimes

In a new documentary, Joan Does Glamour, Joan Collins lambasts Britons for their lack of clothes.

'I think standards have slipped,' she says. 'If they continue slipping, we'll all be walking around barefoot with a minimum of clothes... I think people have become sloppy in their grooming and in themselves.'

Harsh words indeed. But I wonder if the poor dear is suffering from selective amnesia?

Happy memories: Joan Collins in The Bitch (1979)

The first time I clapped eyes on her was in one of her most popular films, The Bitch (1979), her follow-up to The Stud (1978).

Happily, the internet is here to remind us of one of the film's key scenes, in which Ms Collins (pictured), in the title role, is wearing nothing but a corset. A man in a suit and tie has just walked into her boudoir.

Chessboxing - in which a round of chess alternates with a round of boxing - is, it seems, the latest craze.

All good fun, but crazes come and go. Before long, chessboxing fans will be on the lookout for something new. Luckily, I have several new game/sport combinations already in development:

DiscuScrabble: Large circular Scrabble letters are hurled onto a giant Scrabble board from a distance of 200ft.

Box-a-Stix: Just like Pick-a-Sticks, but competitors wear boxing gloves.

Marathonopoly: The game of Monopoly is played using the whole of Central London as the board. This means that with each successive throw of the dice a player has to run from, say, Old Kent Road to The Angel Islington and then on to The Strand, while negotiating for properties with real estate agents along the way. Experts estimate that with the advent of HIPs and all the relevant homesellers' questionnaires to fill in, not forgetting occasional spells in prison, it may take anything up to 35 years to complete a single game.

BungeeBridge: Four players take it in turns to bungee-jump 200ft on to a bridge table. Each must play his hand before the rope whizzes him back up to the platform.

Crogammon: Competitors play two rounds of backgammon, then hit each other over the head with croquet mallets.

Well, this is it. Another pint?

It has emerged that Michael Jackson did not go to his grave before recording a song in which he immortalised the greatest of all British saloon bar cliches.

In pubs up and down the country, whenever one regular expresses an opinion on the weather, politics, or sport, another regular will invariably chorus 'This Is It'.

'It's high time they got rid of Gordon Brown.'

'This is it!'

'Hanging's too good for 'em.'

'This is it!'

'They should never have got rid of Ian Botham.'

'This is it!'

And so forth.

It's hard to imagine Michael Jackson propping up the bar at the Old Bull And Bush, but he has now immortalised it in song.

Yesterday saw the premiere of his new single, called, appropriately This Is It.

In it, he keeps warbling This Is It while taking his characteristic little gulps of air (was he by any chance an asthmatic?).

As far as one can make it out, the chorus goes: 'This is it, here I stand, 'I'm the light of the world, I feel grand, 'Got this love I can feel, 'And I know - yes - for sure it's real, 'THIS IS IT!'

It's destined to become a saloon bar classic, played on pub pianos up and down the country, with tweedy gents adding their own percussion by banging their pintmugs on the pub counter, removing their pipes from their mouths and chorusing 'THIS IS IT!' at the tops of their voices.

It's somehow reassuring to think that Michael Jackson, who seemed so unconventional in his life, has, in death, become the standard bearer for pub bores the world over.